Saturday, May 7, 2016

Mat and my schedule have been off since I'm orienting to the emergency room. Kristy had some days off at the same time I did so we decided to do an overnight cycling trip. Weather reports were squirrelly. Our original plan was to spend 3 days cycling the Denali road in Denali National Park, however, the weather report for the National Park indicated rain/snow mix. We looked at other ideas but tentatively settled on cycling the Denali Highway from the Paxson side since the weather looked decent there. I left the house around 9 AM. There were high clouds to the north but it looked sunny & clear to the east. I called Kristy in Wasilla and we decided to go for it. It was a lovely clear drive out but clouds started stacking up the closer I got to Glennallen, to the point where it was actually raining as I rolled through town. But there was light and streaks of blue to the north!

Start of ride photo!

Made it to the Paxson cutoff at 1:40 PM with bluebird skies, Kristy joined me 10 minutes later. We decided to see how far up the highway we could drive since there was no gate blocking the road. We drove 7 miles until we reached a rest stop just before the top of the first pass, good way to cut out a 1000ft climb. We parked in the parking lot and got ready. We hit the road on our bikes just before 3 PM and enjoyed the warm sunshine and clear weather. The road was completely free of snow, and therefore anyone could drive on it. Fortunately, there weren't too many cars out there yet. We made to Tangle Lakes where we sat for a lunch out of the breeze. We were considering camping at the Tangle Lakes campground but the road into the campground was long and covered in snow. Not to mention the campground itself was right on the lake and pretty exposed to the wind. We decided to keep going.

We made it to milepost 26 where we found a snow-free flat patch of dirt where we could pitch our tent. Kristy definitely could have kept going but I was feeling very tired and out of shape; I hadn't ridden a bike any distance in years! We set up camp then walked further down the road to eat our dinner. After dinner, we decided to go for a walk to warm ourselves up. It was such a lovely evening except for the chilly wind. We walked almost to Maclaren pass and back, about five miles. We rigged up our Ursacks far away and retired to bed.

Camp for the night

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